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Galleries of panoramas shot on Fanotec poles

If you are new to making pole panoramas or when you search for another pole then it can be a bit difficult to decide which pole suits you best.
To help you a bit I made a gallery for each of the Fanotec Pole Series that are available.
In the galleries you find examples that gives a good idea what kind of view you can expect with each of the poles.

About the height of the poles:
Each panorama is shot at the maximum height that is possible for the model, with the Series 1 pole the lens is approx. 2,9 meter from the ground and with the Series 2 pole approx. 5,9 meter from the ground. Some extra height is possible but to get the best stability I prefer not to fully expand the tubes but leave a few extra cm inside.

About the gear on the poles:
On top is a Canon EOS 5D camera (*) with a shaved Tokina 10-17 zoomlens, a Fanotec mini-quickmount and a Fanotec R1 lensring.
The camera is set in portrait position and wireless released by a ZAPShot controller.
For leveling I use a clamp-on bubble level.
At the bottom of the poles I have a Fanotec R-D4 rotator with Fanotec footplate.
(*) One of the Series 1 panoramas is shot with a Canon EOS 550D and a Tokina 10-17@10mm.

About the shoot:
I take 6 images around with the Tokina 10-17 lens zoomed to 14.5 mm (**).
The pole is hold handheld in a steady and leveled position. When I am in doubt if I wobble the pole too much or when I see that there is a lot of movement in the scene then I simply shoot another series of images, later I stitch both series and keep the best.
Most times I don't shoot zenith images because they are almost impossible to batch process when there is more then just sky in the image.
Please keep in mind that very few people, other then panorama makers ;-) will ever look upwards in a panorama just to see more sky.
(**) One of the Series 2 panoramas is shot with a Tokina 10-17@12.5mm.

About the images:
To get the smallest possible footprint of the pole I set the R1 to a down tilt of -15 degree and shift the lens approx. 12 mm forwards out of NPP.
By doing this the top of the R1 is not visible in the images, in fact the footprint of the pole is so small (less then 6 degree) that you can see your own fingers holding the pole.
Due to its small size the footprint is easy to edit by cloning or by using a logo as I do.
On the 5D camera the images of the Tokina 10-17@14.5 mm are full frame with a vertical FoV of approx. 150 degree so this means there is a black hole in zenith of approx. 30 degree.

About the processing of the images:
For reason of comparison there are no patch images applied in several panoramas so what you see is what you get !
Most images are batch processed, if you are new to batch processing and like to try it out yourself then perhaps this tutorial I wrote about how to batch process handheld pole panoramas can help you on track:

About the panoramas:
With the camera, lens and settings as described above I make equirectangulars of 10800 px width and with a vertical field of view of 150 degree.
Images are stitched with PTGui Pro and converted to Flash (tiles 2400 px) and HtmlCss3 (tiles 960 to 480 px for iPad and iPhone/iPod) with Pano2VR.
To hide the black hole in zenith I block the player at 60 degree.

About the galleries:
Panoramas can be viewed in Flash for desktop computers and in HtmlCss3 for iDevices.
In the panorama controller is a button that links to the INDEX of images.
In case you encounter a serious problem and can't view the panoramas then please let me know.
For questions, or if you want to report something, please use the Reply option of this posting.

?...Do you have infos about the wind that was blowing the day you shot your panos?.....

Hello Heinz,

I have no exact data about the wind speed, all I can tell is that windspeed was varying a lot from almost no to a hard wind.
Series 1 pole is good to handle when there is wind, Series 2 pole is little bit harder to keep leveled but when there is a little wind this is not a problem.

Very valuable information I'm sure many will find extremely useful. Thank you for taking the time to share this.
Also many people might not realize our Carbon Fiber Poles are much more stable in windy situations than your traditional aluminum poles. The higher up you go the greater the tendency for any pole to swing in the lightest of breezes so the added strength of carbon fiber is very beneficial.
You also have a little wiggle room with the NPP and exact positioning of camera and lens when shooting pole panoramas. The further the foreground objects are the lesser noted parallax. But like Wim said do a couple go-around's to make sure you get the shot.
And remember - carbon fiber has high electrical conductivity - keep away from power lines (even if insulated). And always be vigilant that your gear is not only securely fastened but also of the surrounding people and objects should the pole every get away from you.

But hey, higher is not always better and Wim has some examples I think.
Cheers

Hi Frank,

I am 1.7m. Glad you say higher is not always better. :-) I think the key is the perspective of the pano which changes with the height.
Series 2 pole allows one to use at shorter extension. So there is no drawback to get a series 2 pole. One can also start with upper unit alone which is about 3m max, then get the lower unit when more height is needed.
I think I can conclude that Series 1 and Series 2 upper unit is good for city scape, while Series 2 complete unit is good for landscape. Series 1 has a closed length of an umbrella and is extremely portable.

Many thanks to Wim, each pano is worth a thousand words when it comes to deciding which pole to buy.

.....I think the key is the perspective of the pano which changes with the height.....

Hello Nick,

I agree, to much perspective can ruin a view and that is why I try to prevent that people are not too close by in a pole panorama but when taken care about this, and in the right scene, a high view can deliver a very special perspective.
I just added a few panoramas to the Series 2 pole gallery, the third image in the gallery is exactly showing what I mean.

....I think I can conclude that Series 1 and Series 2 upper unit is good for city scape, while Series 2 complete unit is good for landscape......

Again I agree, with Series 1 pole or the upper part of Series 2 pole (or Series 2 pole with only the upper tubes expanded) you get a perspective that most people will find attractive, when using a full expanded Series 2 pole in a city scape it is possible that not everyone will like the perspective.....

In several panoramas of the galleries I did not edit the shadow of the pole, they really show "what you see is what you get".

When you like to remove the pole shadow and when the scene is not dynamic and there are no high objects crossing the pole shadow then using a single patch shot is all you need to manually edit out the pole shadow.

My workflow:
- First I shoot the 6 images around as usual,
- Then I move the pole approx. 30-40 cm sideways of the pole shadow,
- I aim the camera at the the pole shadow, I hold the pole with a stretched arm standing at the right side of the pole to make sure that my own shadow is not in the part of the image that I will use for patching and then I take the patch shot.
By doing this the pole shadow of the patch shot is parallel at a distance of 30-40 cm of the original shadow making a total overlap of 60-80 cm possible, this overlap is sufficient for a good blending of the patch shot and the round shots.
- In PTGui Pro 9 I mask out the pole shadow in all round shots.
- In the patch shot I mask all of the image "red" with the paint bucket and with a large pencil I make a very thick and as width as possible "white" stripe on the place where the pole shadow is in the other round shots.
- I optimize the images with a disabled patch shot, when the optimizing is done I enable the patch shot, align it with VP correction and output the equirectangular.

Important !
Moving of the pole is not easy to do with a high pole and a heavy camera on top, you have to lift the pole a bit to get it free of the ground and then move it 30-40 cm while keeping the pole vertical. I suggest that you practice this with a not fully expanded pole to get a feeling what kind of forces you have to master and if you feel insecure or there are people around you then please don't move the pole expanded but first lower the pole, then move the pole sideways and expand the pole in the new position. Whatever method you choose, keep it safe!

As you can see by inspecting the example this method works even when the ground is not flat, the most important thing to keep in mind is that this method will fail when you try to patch a pole shadow that is crossing an object that is any higher then a few decimeters, like a fence, a road sign, etc.

If you like you can even patch the small footprint of the pole with this method, just move the pole not only 30-40 cm sideways but also 30-40 cm backwards from the pole shadow.

Hope you don't mind me posting some of my samples here. Anyway, here is a couple of mine taken during eve of Deepavali at Little India, Singapore. I only have the 3m pole and still waiting anxiously for the tripod adaptor and hopefully the extension series 2.

I really like to see other examples like yours but when posted outside the galleries and without mentioning the specs of the shoot, the workflow, etc. it is better to put them in the NN User Gallery with a descriptive title to prevent any bias or misunderstanding.http://www.nodalninja.com/forum/foru...N-User-Gallery

It is a fact that shooting from a tower with a handheld pole will always give parallax issues in nadir
Using a nadir patch is difficult because the area you have to patch contains "depth" and you have to do a lot of masking and other tricks in Photoshop to get it right.

A much easier and alternative way is to patch the nadir with a logo or a mirrorball.
In this Series 1 Pole panorama example I used an inversed mirrorball that covers the parallax errors between the upper and lower bars of the safety railing:

The mirrorball is made with Pano2VR, output options Transformation, Mirrorball.
Instead of using a normal mirrorball I changed the tilt for the mirrorball settings from the default (90 degree) to -90 degree to make the mirrorball more attractive and less boring.
You can see the difference between a normal and an inversed mirrorball here: